spaf@cs.purdue.EDU (Gene Spafford) (10/21/88)
The posting about creating groups that has gone out almost monthly for
the last year or so says that the discussion and vote are ADVISED.
There is certainly no requirement of any kind, in the sense that any
sites issuing or honoring a newgroup message will get blown off the
network. To the contrary, it simply states that any such "newgroup"
might not be honored by a significant percentage of sites....especially
if the "newgroup" isn't honored at sites in major positions of newsflow
(like uunet, att, ucbvax, etc.) or appears in my unofficial list of
newsgroups.
In the past, some groups have been created by "fiat" when conditions
demonstrated a pressing need. The requirement of a vote and discussion
serves to make sure that the name and position within the namespace are
correct, and that there is sufficient support to maintain the group.
Sometimes, events show that such things need not be demonstrated --
they are obvious as is.
So it is with the comp.sys.next group, it seems. Someone has issued a
"newgroup." The volume for such a group certainly appears to be
present, there has been little resistance voiced in news.groups, and
comp.sys.next is the obvious choice of name. Some of us (I mean to
include myself), believe that the NeXt (or however it is) controversy
is pure marketing hype (the machine is not going to be very useful for
computer science teaching or research, but English and history majors
should love it). Nonetheless, if people want to flood the net with
speculative articles about a system they haven't used, they might as
well do it in a labeled group rather than crossposted to other, less
appropriate groups. People already post megabytes of drivel (4Mb per
day average of late) on subjects that know little about, so why should
this group be different?
I am going to poll a group of major site admins to see if they intend
to keep the group. If so, I'll list it in the list of groups. If not,
I won't list it until after the current vote is completed, as per the
guidelines.
As far as comments about the backbone go, well, everyone complained
about the backbone group and its attempts to set some guiding
policies. Those complaints took their toll; Bob Webber and his ilk got
their way. The backbone is gone, as such. And until someone can come
up with a reasonably fair, sane method of resolving disputes for a
network of over 10,000 sites and 300,000 readers -- including some very
stupid and anti-social members -- you'll have to settle for this:
commentary and debate in the news.* groups, with an occasional
unilateral move that may or may not be accepted by everyone else.
--
Gene Spafford
NSF/Purdue/U of Florida Software Engineering Research Center,
Dept. of Computer Sciences, Purdue University, W. Lafayette IN 47907-2004
Internet: spaf@cs.purdue.edu uucp: ...!{decwrl,gatech,ucbvax}!purdue!spaf